Twenty-Six Weeks

“The hollow within him was quiet, snarled with brambles. Impossible to see himself and too private to show to anyone else. Garvel shivered in the quiet of the Edgerunner’s hold and curled his mismatched arms around his knees; thought on the white light he had been told was his breath. He watched it expand and contract until he considered the act of breathing and found himself gasping for air.”

 

It has been twenty-six weeks since I started writing The Orphan Garvel and I feel the need to write something about the experience, though coming to talk about it I find myself at a loss of what to say.

 

It’s work.

 

There should be something more profound in this, maybe something about dedication, inspiration, the power of words on a page. There isn't though. It’s just 500 words every weekday, 2,500 every week, and being diligent about not trying to do more. I often hit 2,500 early and give myself days off. On those days I don’t write stories, I don’t even think about my novel, I just relax.

 

It’s not easy though. Everything outside of the novel feels like its in motion. Work and wages and our place in the world are no longer things we can control. My own mind is working against me, keeping me anxious and guessing. Making me frustrated at tiny things. I stagger variously between a kind of profound sadness deep inside me and a bubbling cauldron of rage building at a million injustices none of which I can do anything about. I feel helpless a lot of the time and so I write.

 

I write about a man just like me, at once privileged and beneath the heel of a greater privilege, a man on the edge of a profound tragedy, an unravelling of thing, the failure of imagination and optimism. It seems fitting.

 

It's also important to acknowledge that for all the things in motion I am privileged enough to have a job where I can sit at my desk writing on my break, to have the support of my family, to not have to struggle for the very fundamentals of life and in that struggle be left without the energy to relax, let alone create. I’m thankful for that, and for the friends who have cheered me on along the way, from my beta readers to the people who occasionally like my daily word counts on Twitter. You all help me keep the plate spinning.

 

So what next?

 

Well The Orphan Garvel is, according to the plan, a little over halfway done, putting the completion of the first draft somewhere in December. Then comes the laborious process of redrafting it, of turning something clumsily written into something that maybe, one day, I can actually sell. It’s a long road and often it feels like a lonely one. There's nothing to show until the end when I find out if the work I've done has been worth it. Still when I think about this story that's been curled up within me for years I can't think of not telling it, and maybe in the act I'll learn to appreciate my own work again, to cherish the moments when the words are flowing and the story drags me along with it.

 

Until I have something to show for it though I will just say thank you for reading this, and I hope you get to read something a little more substantial in the future.